The Greatest Taco in the World

The Greatest Taco in the World
by Florence the READ Books Dog
(as told to her biped, Jeremy Kaplan)
Summer 2016

What is This Thing Called Hooky?On an average morning my big, goofy biped chooses to become a giant, goofy quadruped. He plops behind the wheel of his driving machine as I spread out across the Mexican blanket on the backseat, he squints at the dashboard clock & mutters “oh damn we’re late again,” and then we exit right out of the driveway. All this rigmarole routinely results in the two of us pulling into the bookstore parking lot at 11:10 in the a.m. On this morning, however, we exited left out of the driveway a few hours earlier than usual, and the elder of my two biped boys was making an aberrant appearance in the passenger seat. What was he doing here? Isn’t he hairy enough to be gainfully employed on a Monday morn? Where are they taking me? Am I going to be “tutored” a second time?

The boy turned & said “Hey girl!” with the bug-eyed village idiot grin he utilizes especially for me. “We’re playing hooky today!”

The Burned Dogs of Hookyland
Though it was sufficiently verdant and contained a petite lake, Lincoln Park spread out before me like a post-apocalyptic adumbration of the future. Here was a world of bipeds, and only bipeds, rooted to the ground in a queue that wound around the perimeter of said park. What kind of park is utterly bereft of canines? A post-apocalyptic park, that’s what! A post-apocalyptic park that teased me with the myriad scents of sundry dogs recently present, but presently vanished. Is this what happens at a so-called political rally? The un-dogging of parks? Well sir, I wanted no part of it.

What I did want part of was that greasy smell emanating from a mobile grill that a small biped woman was wheeling up and down the line.

“Don’t be a jackass,” said this so-called dad, as I tried my damnedest to drag the imbecile toward that so-called hot dog pepper breakfast.

A swarthy old hippie biped kneeled in front of me with raised fist and declared: “Viva la raza, Perrito!” Drugs had addled his mind. I am obviously a Perrita.

Meanwhile, numerous bipeds had taken to chanting, most likely in reference to the sweet smelling meat on the grill: “Feel the burn!” Around the time those bipeds finally uprooted & the queue began to unravel. I should have been insouciantly passed out on my bookstore couch, but I was not. I was at a political rally without dogs, being cruelly teased by the smell of pepper dogs.

Free Neutering for All!
About an hour after being funneled into a gated area, we observed several bipeds on a stage singing songs. About an hour after they’d ceased their primate warbling, an impassioned biped who insisted several times that he was “chewy,” commenced shouting at least two biped languages into a microphone. Bipeds cheered. My boy biped shook his fist and shouted “Fuckin’ A, chewy!” Whatever the hell that means.

A female biped who the other bipeds called “Actress” next took to the stage. She had the sort of dreamy expression on her face as I experience subsequent to a walk in the park that results in one of my bipeds filling a plastic bag with my feculence, so I supposed her most recent walk around the park had been a successful one. Actress encouraged the other bipeds “to feel the burn,” provoking their Pavlovian urge to shout and chant, and mine to tug on my leash in an effort to break free of bondage & assault the mobile grill. Actress concluded her speech by beckoning her pale, shiny-pated grandpappy onto the stage.

Christ almighty how those bipeds loved Actress’s grandpappy! The lanky old fella leaned against his podium and, with an accent eerily reminiscent of my younger bipeds’ Brooklyn grandpappy, kvetched about numerous biped injustices, and promised to let the younger bipeds go to school on the cheap, which led to the strange happenstance of many young bipeds cheering for school. Me, I dunno what happens in your average biped academic academy, but when my bipeds took me to the aforementioned “tutoring,” I emerged from that god-forsaken room as barren as the Mojave Desert. So suit yourself, kids. I’m done with tutoring, free or otherwise.

Hooky is Good
After all the shouting was over, the three of us shared chopped-up bits of charred swine purchased in the park; theirs bundled up in thin circles of masa, mine shoveled into my pie hole straight from the bipeds’ hands.

“I’m glad we skipped work and came here to listen to Bernie and eat tacos,” opined my biped boy. “You?”

“Me too,” said Stretch, my elongated biped. “But I wouldn’t do it again.”

“No? Why not?”

“Part of it is the standing in a crowd for 5 hours in order to hear a 1 hour speech. Mostly, even though I agree with pretty much everything Bernie says, I ain’t too hot on the crowd mentality. I mean he’s obviously nothing like Trump trying to incite people to half-wit violence, but get too many people together at once, even the ones you by and large agree with, and they quickly become susceptible to that foamy-mouthed mob mentality. Hundreds of people sharing one brain. I mean Bernie coulda’ said anything: “Let me tell you something; I need you people to kill the hot dog lady and bring me her food!” and half of these knuckleheads woulda’ been pummeling that poor woman as if she were Mussolini. So thank god he didn’t go down that road, right?”

“Dad,” said boy biped. “You are fucking weird.”

“Sorry about that,” shrugged Stretch. “Want that I should take you to Hilary Clinton’s next stump speech?”

“Sure,” said boy biped. “I hear she’s appearing on the Westside this week and it only costs two-thousand bucks a plate to get in.”

“Well then we best get back to work and start making us some scratch.”

As the bipeds stood up and bipeded toward the garbage cans with their empty, grease-soaked paper plates, I sauntered alongside, trying to imagine how tantalizing these taco things are going to smell on a two-thousand dollar plate.

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“What shall I do with all my books?" was the question; and the answer, "Read them," sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will... If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.